ThirtyDay Phoenix
by psychegurl
Summary: The War may be over for some, but it's not over for everyone. And, as Snape soon learns, it's much easier to be a hero when you're dead. My attempt at a *canon-compliant!* happy ending for Snape. AU only in that he survives. Eventual romance.
1. Chapter 1

"Kidnapping, Murder, High Treason against the Ministry of Magic, Dark Magic including, but not limited to, the use of all three Unforgiveables, occasionally against Aurors, children, Muggles, and government wizards, the use of potions illegal in thirty-six countries, also against children, Aurors, and Ministry officials, Conspiracy to commit Murder, Theft of Private and Government Property, Destruction of Private and Government Property, Willful complicity in crimes including, but not limited to, Murder, Arson, Theft, and Rape…"

The voice rolled out into the silent courtroom, cataloguing the list of crimes.

"The Defendant, Severus Snape, being placed under the influence of Veritaserum, is hereby charged to answer whether he is guilty of these crimes."

Silence, from the man slumped in the chair.

"I repeat, Severus Snape: you have been charged to answer whether or not you are guilty."

Still there was no answer; no movement. Rustles of disbelief began to move along the edges of the courtroom; rustles that agreed wholeheartedly with the viciously gleeful tone in the examiner's voice as he continued:

"If you do not answer, the court will be forced to accept your silence as an admission of guilt, and contempt of court will be added to the list of charges."

The man still didn't move.

Up in the stands – usually empty, despite the new Ministerial decree that all war trials would be open to the public, but packed today as they had never been before – a red-headed young man slammed his fist into the seat in front of him.

"Bloody stupid git!"

"Why doesn't he say something?" said the equally red-haired young woman next to him, leaning forward to crane fiercely towards the witness stands. "Harry said…"

"Severus Snape," said the voice of the examiner, over the increasingly loud mutterings from the crowd, "you have thirty seconds in which to give us an answer, or…"

"Oh, I can't look!" A bushy-haired witch sitting on his other side buried her face in the red-head's shoulder; she had tears in her eyes. "Ron, it's too awful…"

"Seven…six…five…four…"

Finally, for the first time, the dark head moved, then lifted-

"Go to hell," said Severus Snape, and the courtroom erupted into chaos.

It had to be Dumbledore, was Snape's first thought, when the excruciating pain spreading from his shoulder first made him aware he wasn't dead. It had to be Dumbledore, because no one but a Gryffindor would be so damn callous as to leave him alive.

He had opened his eyes to find pearly wetness dripping down the front of his robes, from the eyes of the red bird perched on the table where Nagini had lain. Snape lay there and thought about the bird and Grindlewald and immortality and Horcruxes, and then, slowly, sat up.

"If you're expecting me to cut off my right hand to get you another body, you're going to be disappointed," he warned the phoenix.

It fluttered forward, and for one terrifying moment he thought it was going to stay with him, but then it turned and launched out the window, with a small soft cry that sent joy and agony alike shooting through his heart until he nearly wept, thinking of the sweet, final oblivion of death that he had lost…

It occurred to Snape, watching it dip down for a drink of water in the lake – and perhaps it really _was_ only a bird, after all – that Harry Potter was probably dead by now. One Horcrux, one boy, and twenty years of punishing work and frustration and hatred so strong it nearly blinded him, successfully destroyed. One chance of redemption, gone.

Someone should probably be doing something about killing the Dark Lord. He should probably be doing something about killing the Dark Lord.

Snape couldn't find it in himself to care. Not about death. Not about Tom Riddle's death. But his own death, and Harry Potter's death, oh, that was another story entirely…

His fingers went, automatically, to the sleeve of his left robe, a sick sense of duty coercing his movements even now, even now…

The Mark was gone.

It was over.

He had nothing to do.

Nothing to do, for the first time in his life, for the first time that he could remember. Nothing to do but lie here, thinking, and try to forget…

Snape wondered how long it would be before somebody came to find him. If anyone would ever come and find him, or if, if he kept lying here, the roof of the shack would someday give way and come to rest gently, finally, around his bones…

Bill Weasley, left arm bound in a sling, shoved his way against the crowds leaving the courtroom towards his brother and sister.

"We got a postponement," he said briskly, responding to the unasked question in Hermione's eyes. "They're going to put off finishing the hearing until next April, two months from today…"

"What's going to happen in the meantime?" asked Ginny, standing on tiptoe to look after the witnesses leaving the box.

"Probation." At the blank expressions on Ginny's and Ron's faces, and the shocked look on Hermione's, he elaborated: "He's allowed to go free, rather than being held in Azkaban – Harry pushed real hard for that. But he's stripped of magical privileges until the next hearing. He'll be under surveillance by the Ministry – well, by us, really –and he's forbidden to use a wand…"

"Well, that's not much of a loss, seeing how he hasn't got one anyway," said Ron brightly, and Hermione turned to glare at him.

"I think it's horrible. He's being treated like a _criminal_-"

"Honestly, it's been hell trying to get him even that," said Bill frankly. "If it wasn't for Harry, we'd never have gotten a second hearing in the first place. Well…you saw what he was like today. And he was Headmaster of Hogwarts, when…"

"It wasn't his fault! Harry and Ginny and Neville _told_ them-"

"I know he's supposed to be innocent, Hermione; we've all heard Harry's story. I know he probably did all he could, but – well – it's different when it's your children."

The other three looked at him stonily. Bill shuffled his feet. "Look, I've got to hurry over to Courthouse Three before the recess is over. Mum's case is coming up soon…"

Molly Weasley, mother, housewife, and the kindest woman any of them had ever known, was also scheduled to go on trial that morning for murdering in cold blood the Death Eater who threatened her daughter.

It _did_ change things, when it was your children.

Looking at the dark eyed crowds streaming past around them, Hermione wondered if the sentence had been so lenient after all. Some of Voldemort's supporters were still at large; there had been an attack on some Muggles the previous week, and Ginny still woke her up some nights with screaming nightmares about her last year at Hogwarts. And to turn the man loose among these crowds, without a wand for protection…

Where was he going to go?

Snape was grimly indifferent towards the sentence. As soon as he found out they were going to make him survive, he no longer cared what they did with him. The indignity of being forced to live as a Muggle was nothing compared to the fact that he was being _rescued_ by Harry-_bloody_-Potter, hero, apparently, of the entire Wizarding world. He endured the congratulations and the open speculation and _pity_ and concern for his health, and dutifully ate the bowl of soup somebody shoved into his hands. But when Molly Weasley (newly freed) started suggesting that he should stay at the Burrow (Won't it be _wonderful_! And he can have Charlie's old room-) he stood up, mechanically put on the suit Potter had bought for him – the only Muggle clothing he had worn since First Year – and slipped quietly, unnoticed, into the night.

He had to live. He'd accepted that. But he damned well didn't have to make it easy for them.


	2. Chapter 2

Okay, ladies and gentlemen. Episode two, and I'm officially bringing my pairing out of the closet. Treat them kindly, please; they're new and tender. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen a full-length fic with these two before, which I think is a crying shame, because I am utterly and totally in LOVE with them. There's even enough canon support to make it (halfway) believable, and I hope you'll all give them a chance...

*phew* Insecure author's rant over. And, to reward you for putting up with that, I've got two chapters in a row for you this week, and a shiny new feature: teaser lines at the end of every chapter. So, here goes...

Disclaimer (forgot this last time, because I am disorganized): I don't own anything. Except my laptop. And a very, very oversized imagination.

Petunia Dursley did not run. Ever. When absolutely necessary, she did Pilates. And running in public was undignified, and leaving her husband and her shopping in the middle of the street to go sprinting off after a barely-glimpsed profile doubly so, and yet…

"_Sev_?!" Adrenaline and the heat and the fact of what she was _doing_ there (Petunia Dursley did not run) caught up with her all in a second, because it _was_ him after all. It _was_ him, staring down at the hand on his arm as if he expected her to hit him, as if he were _afraid_ of her, and she was swaying slightly and gasping and feeling ten years old all over again.

"Tuney?" He said incredulously. "Tuney _Evans_?"

He was wearing a _suit_. What was he doing, here in the middle of London, in the bizarrely unseasonable sun, wearing a Muggle suit? He was as incongruous as she was…

"What are you _doing_ here?"

Unable to think of an answer, Petunia fell back on the only possible, the only _rational_ explanation.

"I don't want any of your kind coming near my family," she sniffed, shaking away his arm as if he was the one who had put it there. He blinked at her. "My _name,"_ she snapped, "is Petunia. Petunia Dursley."

Abruptly, and predictably, his face flipped into amusement.

" 'Dursley'?" His eyes raked her, and she bristled – the way that man looked at people, as if he could see through their clothes – "Petunia _Dursley_…"

"Petunia!" Vernon Dursley's voice echoed like a bellow from behind her, and she jumped. "Who's this?"

"He's-" _A wizard_.

But Petunia Dursley did not run after wizards on the street…

"Your…wife…and I," said Snape, looking Vernon Dursley over with obvious amusement, "knew each other as children."

"Really?" A light seemed to flicker behind the beady eyes, and Vernon Dursley's tone changed, in the space of a second, from its customary rudeness to an almost (Petunia winced) _servile_ amiability. "And what brings such a distinguished person as _you_ to the area, Mr…"

"Snape. Severus Snape. My…I own a house near here…"

"Yes, yes, of course." Mr. Dursley was eyeing Snape's suit (it _was_ a ludicrously good suit, Petuina noticed with disgust. What the man must have done to get his hands on it, she didn't like to think…), with one of his Business Smiles (Friendly, Number 4), and Petunia felt the air constrict around her as she saw all too clearly where this was going …

"I'd no idea Petunia had any friends around the neighborhood! We're – well, the flat is really only temporary – only until things-"

He stopped and attempted to backtrack, puce-faced, with some mutterings about the economy. Snape was reminded distinctly of the time (six years ago, or five) he'd asked Lucius Malfoy where his house-elf had gone, and found out a year later it was working for Albus at Hogwarts.

Petunia pulled at her husband's sleeve. "Vernon-"

Vernon Dursley brushed her away with a look of annoyance that clearly indicated that if anyone was responsible for this embarrassment, it certainly hadn't been _him_, and redirected his attention.

"You can be sure we'd have looked you up much sooner if _I'd_ know someone like _you_ would be in the neighborhood, Mr. Snape, but then" (Jovial Chuckle Number 7) "you know women, eh? Poor wife forgets her own name, half the time, don't know what she'd do without me…"

Petunia closed her eyes in abject horror. "_Vernon_-"

"Anyway, Mr. Snape," he said brightly, apparently entirely misinterpreting his wife's frantic tugging on his arm, "As you're in the neighborhood – old friends and all – what do you say to coming 'round to dinner sometime? How about tonight? We'd love to have you-"

"That sounds…interesting," said Severus Snape, with some small measure of surprise, "I think I will…"

Teaser: a high-heel came slamming down on Snape's foot. He'd had enough experience with bone-breaking, to know exactly what the crunching noise was. Damn it, he'd been hoping to _save_ the last of that skele-gro…


	3. Chapter 3

Snape had been shocked, when he first heard the address, to find that Tune– _Petunia_ – apparently lived not very far from Spinner's End. He arrived punctually at five, but before he could raise a hand to knock on the door (which showed bleach stains around the edges of the graffiti) it swung open, to reveal Petunia Dursley armed with a molting feather duster and scowl.

"How dare you come here? How _dare_ you?!"

Snape didn't even have time to open his mouth before the duster was brandished into it, accompanied by another round of screeching.

"This is _my_ house. My _home_. And if you think you can come…come _crawling_ in here, you've got another thought coming. _Lily_ might not have been intelligent enough to know trouble when she saw it, but if you think for one _second_ I will allow-"

"WHAT'S GOING ON OUT THERE? PET? HE'S GOING TO BE HERE ANY SECOND, AND IF THIS IS ANOTHER OF DUDLEY'S WORTHLESS FRIENDS YOU'VE THOUGHT TO LET IN-"

Vernon Dursley, in shirtsleeves even filthier than Snape's robes, was standing openmouthed in the doorway holding a bottle of beer in one hand and a television remote in the other.

"_Mr. _Snape," Petunia said icily, "was just telling me that he unfortunately has a previous engagement tonight, and won't be eating with us after all."

"I'm terribly sorry," Snape drawled, right on cue, in that horrible, thick, dark _salubrious_ voice, "I thought it would be best to inform you in person. I hope I haven't upset your evening plans-" And his eyes glittered over the unopened bottle.

Vernon Dursley looked ready to punch him.

"No," he managed, after an internal struggle. "No, that's perfectly all right-" His voice was about an octave higher than Petunia's had been.

"Important person…" he muttered. "Perfectly understandable – important person, wouldn't have time…" He turned to direct a glare at Petunia, who didn't move. She seemed to have become one with the wood of the feather duster. "Haven't you time for drinks or anything, then?"

Snape felt, as he'd felt many times when confronted with Wormtail, that saying 'no' would be rather like kicking a puppy.

"I…"

"Excellent," Mr. Dursley's eyes momentarily lit up with a hunger that had nothing to do with Snape's cufflinks, and turned back hastily into the dingy door.

"So," he asked, after obtaining the bottle opener and opening the beer (leaving his wife to pointedly refuse to offer Severus anything) "What exactly is it you do, Mr. Snape?"

"'What do I do?'" Snape repeated, incredulously. He was aware of Tun- _Petunia's_ eyes drilling livid holes in the side of his head, and wondered abstractedly whether glares so hot one could feel one's face igniting were a skill unique to the Evans sisters, or merely another of many coincidences conspiring to make this exchange still more surreal.

What _did_ he do...

Fought. Not very often, but after so many years, that was always the first thing that came to mind. Part of him wondered if it always would be. Killed (best not to think about that…). Lied, and protected ungrateful hateworthy whelps from their own stupidity. He was a spy, or had been, for the past seventeen years, and he brewed halfway decent potions, but as for what he actually _did_…

"I am teacher," Snape said, with some surprise. "Professor, actually. I teach-"

Abruptly, a high-heel came slamming down on Snape's foot. He'd had enough experience with bone-breaking, to know exactly what the crunching noise was. Damn it, he'd been hoping to _save_ the last of that skele-gro…

Snape glared daggers at her through watery eyes as he straightened up, and Petunia experienced an unexpected second of genuine fear. Even dressed in shabby secondhand girl's clothes all those years ago, Severus Snape had always carried a hint of the dangerous. Whatever had been happening to him for the past seventeen years, that dangerous air was no longer only a hint. Petunia shrank back against Vernon-

Severus Snape actually _smirked_.

"I teach chemistry."

Thankfully, Vernon was still too busy drooling over Snape's cufflinks to notice Petunia turn crimson.

"So," he coughed, gruffly, then hiccupped. The liquid in the bottle was half gone. "Chemistry, you said? Like with…chemicals, and things? Is there much money in that, then?"

"_Vernon_…"

"How much would you say you get every a quarter, then? Three thousand pounds? Two thousand-"

"Vernon!"

"Don't interrupt, Pet, this is business – of course you don't mind me taking an interest in your business, do you, Mr. Snape? All in the way of friendliness, eh? I don't suppose – you wouldn't know if anyone were looking to fill a position, would you, Mr. Snape? Or if any of your colleagues-"

"_VERNON_!"

The bottle hit the floor in a shatter of glass before either of them realized she'd stood up.

"That…is…_enough_! I refuse to sit here and listen to you- to him- I don't _believe_ you-" Mr. Dursley blinked back at her in confusion.

"What's the matter?"

"He. Is. A. _Wizard_!" She spat it out with the same degree of vitriol that Lucius would have said "Muggle," and Vernon actually stumbled back, turning white, and spun to stare wide-eyed at Severus.

"He is?"

Snape opened his mouth, and closed it. Mercifully, he was saved from answering by Vernon himself, who caught sight of the cufflinks and stopped, color flooding back into his face.

"Well, why shouldn't I talk to him," Mr. Dursley said, loudly - too loudly. It was Petunia's turn to gape open-mouthed.

"What?"

"By God, why shouldn't we try to get a little of our own back? After all the sacrifices I've made, all those years of – of _abnormality_, of That Boy living off my money, in _our _house, off my food, it's only reasonable, isn't it? And you said yourself, Petunia – he's one of Them, one of- one of _your_ sort-"

She made a stifled, choking sound, as if wounded. The piggy eyes kept glaring. "It's not _my_ Goddamned family that got us into this mess, after all. It's _your_ damned sister-"

Petunia's back went up, and her face went very still.

"Don't you say it!" Her voice was dangerously quiet. "Don't you say a _word_, Vernon Dursley. _I_ have not said a word since this damn so-called war started and you decided, Vernon, _you_ decided to move! And I have not said a word about Privet Drive or selling the car or my jewelry or your refusal to get a _job._ So don't you talk about _my sister_, because no matter how bad things get – no matter _how_ bad, Vernon Dursley, I would _never _stoop so low as to _**whore**_ my self-respect to _wizards!_"

In the ringing silence, Snape could see Vernon Dursley's face turning slowly, deeply purple. The table he was gripping trembled. Petunia, automatically, it seemed, took a quivering step back, her lips shriveling in upon themselves, but when she turned away to Snape, it was with the same air of deadly, fragile calm.

"Get out."

He did. He wondered, looking back at the dilapidated, graffiti-scrawled complex of flats, how on earth Petunia Evans had ended up like this.

But then again, considering the past seventeen-plus years, perhaps she'd been the lucky one after all.

When Petunia was twelve, and first formed the well-cherished conviction that magic was worthless, she began reading books. The dark swooping sense of adventure they brought was as close as she could decently come to the dark swooping fantasies of magic she had cherished as a child, dreams which she had learned, after long practice, to fool herself into thinking had only been idle. She found herself clinging to romance novels as if to a lifeline; she devoured one handsome, exotic hero after the next, and came away from each feeling restless, and telling herself that what she really wanted was another book.

And (of course) she steered clear of fantasy. Anything involving what she called "ridiculous notions" she simply refused to read, with such calm complacent obstinacy none of her teachers and, later, her professors ever commented on the lack. The closest she ever managed to bring herself, one cool rainy night in the middle of her second term at college, was Jane Eyre. Halfway through the first chapter, she had been shocked by allusions to pictsies and ghosts in an otherwise seemingly innocuous, sensible story. She put the book away immediately, and for the rest of the day distant images of child-Jane's plain, thin face, ignored in the corner by her family, danced across the back of her imagination as she walked and talked. At ten o'clock that evening, she picked up the book again and resolutely began to read.

She did not take her head out of the text until two PM the next day. She read headlong, devouringly, until, finally, at three in the afternoon – having been late to two lectures and very nearly missed lunch – she came to Rochester's voice calling out in the dark, when Jane was about to give in to St. John, and stopped short.

Stories didn't happen that way. She turned back a page, disbelieving, to see if she had read it wrong, and threw the book down, because _life didn't happen that way_. If two people had decided to be stupid; if the world had decided to be cruel; if the plain, unlovely little girl in the corner had been shoved aside one time too many, there was no God and no force of nature and no – no – no _supernatural forces_ that would step in and fix things. There weren't _miracles_, and Petunia wandered the rest of the day with a sick, headachy feel in the depths of her stomach.

A few months after that she dropped quietly out of college and went back home with no taste left for reading or for handsome, exotic heroes. She never opened Jane Eyre again.

Whew! This is definitely the longest chapter I've ever published, on this or any other site. Next week, more of Petunia's backstory (including the Potters-and-Dursleys wedding thing) and, later, we get back to the action. Teaser:

"This. Is. My. House," said Snape slowly, deciding that small words were probably expedient. "You have broken in and stolen my things."

Another small note for my reviewers (I LOVE you guys! I love, love, love you guys!): yes, I am _definitely_ intending to finish this story. I was very strict with myself about not publishing anything until I knew I had an ending planned, because I hate unfinished stories myself. I can't promise that it will be finished quickly, but I can promise updates at least once a week. And I can thank you, THANK YOU, from the bottom of my heart, for being kind enough to ask for more. You rock!


	4. Chapter 4

_...aaand we begin with more Petunia backstory, while Snape is busy elsewhere. (Don't worry, all, he'll be returning soon...and when he does, he'll bring some very familiar company with him... :)_

Vernon Dursley wasn't handsome, or exotic, or even particularly appealing, but he was always _there_. And he appreciated what no one else did about Petunia – her extraordinary normalcy. Other suitors would praise her dark eyes or long neck and write poems rhyming "love" with "dove" that made them look and her feel foolish (because she lived with the reality those poems were supposed to represent, and it had green eyes and red hair) – or, worse, look at her dark-eyed and make allusions to the "magic" of love.

Vernon never looked foolish, mostly because he never seemed to try at all. At his most generous, he would sometimes say she looked all right, but he said it as if it was something that you _said_, rather than because it had anything particularly to do with his feelings or intentions. He would show up, unexpectedly and often at inconvenient times, and invite her to sit on his lap – never mind that she was _twenty_ – or come watch him box, and seemed to take it for granted that she would want to do these things. Conversation never progressed much beyond the shuffling, puce-faced grunting phase. The most you could say for him was that he never seemed disappointed when she turned him down.

And then, on her twentieth birthday, Petunia decided to try getting married.

Petunia decided to get married because she thought, here was something she could do better than Lily. Because, contrary to popular opinion, Petunia Evans was actually quite attractive – when she wasn't standing next to Lily – and because Vernon Dursley (among others, but he was the loudest, if neither handsome nor exotic) thought the stars and the moon and the Earth revolved around her, and because Lily didn't seem to be getting on so well with that horrible Snape boy anymore.

But then Lily brought home James Potter. James Potter, who not only was handsome and exotic and thought the stars and the moon and the Earth revolved around her sister but who also loved Lily more than he loved the other most important thing in his universe: himself.

(In all the rigmarole of dresses and flowers and no-Lily-you-can't-get-married-at-nineteen, war-or-_no_-war, that horrible Snape boy was utterly forgotten.)

So Petunia ended up getting married not to outdo Lily ("Oh, yes, this is lovely dear but we must save the money for your sister" ...because Lily, of course, had managed a way around her parents as only Lily could) but to escape her, and it was Vernon Dursley, with his cheerful English prejudice and love of normality and his house in Surrey fifty miles away that she finally chose.

She would later remember, long after she had failed to cry at Lily's funeral - would tell herself at night, after she woke herself up shaking in the dark with visions of red hair and stifled sobs, that her marriage was the first decision she had made that didn't have to do with her sister.

She never loved Vernon, but she learned to like him, and even to grow used to him in the end. It was easier to say yes, easier to mold her body and her life around his ideas and inclinations. It was not so much that he was overbearing, but he was not filled with unpleasant memories, and she clung to that – she wanted to _be_ that, wanted to breathe it and wrap the forgetfulness inside her until it clouded out everything she had ever ignored.

She started cleaning and keeping house at first because there was nothing else to do. Vernon was away working, and she didn't know anybody in the new neighborhood, in Surrey, and after her wedding all the old novels (not fantasies, never fantasies) with which she used to entertain herself all fell rather flat. She kept cleaning, and keeping up appearances, because it pleased Vernon, and she was new at the whole being married business and Vernon was so terribly easy to please.

Later she kept up with it – was drawn into it, that awful pull to make all things outwardly, perfectly, terribly _normal,_ so strong it felt as if she were destroying herself when they weren't – out of gradually accumulated prejudice and a grim sense of pride and the realization that this was all that being married would ever be.

There were the good parts of London, there were the bad parts of London, and then there were the hellholes of London. The blocks around Spinner's End were only marginally worse than the very worst of these.

When he first inherited Spinner's End, Snape had initially taken a savage pleasure in magically deconstructing it. He had reordered physical laws to an extravagant degree within the building, sliding arched corridors and sunken cellars in to replace the stairway where he had first seen his mother with a broken nose, the worn window where he had trembled waiting to receive his Hogwarts letter, the hall where his mother's last wand had been snapped, along with his first one…The resulting building was comfortable (if dark), spacious, and unquestionably the wealthiest establishment in the neighborhood – quite possibly, in the entire district. (None of his changes had affected the outside, which resembled nothing so much as a two-story pile of garbage, and still looked too nice to blend in with the surroundings. Foxes were the cleanest of the local vermin.)

It was also (as several former colleagues of both sides would have been shocked to discover) almost completely unprotected. Until Dumbledore, Hogwarts had always been his home.

The inside, Snape noted, bypassing the smashed windows in favor of the apparently untouched front door, now looked almost as bad as the outside. Three months, muggles, and the lure of neglected property had had the inevitable result. At least none of the local wildlife seemed to have moved in yet.

Or had they…

One particularly odorous example of the local vermin was currently lolled, drooling, on his living-room floor, covered with a leather jacket, a healthy layer of fat, and what appeared to be the remnants of Snape's wine cellar. The fact that the damage surrounding said vermin was clearly too extensive to be the work of a single boy did not make Snape feel any more charitable.

"Get out," he snarled, drawing himself up to full glowering-Death-Eater stature.

"I…like…this…place," said the boy slowly. He wasn't even drinking the good wine, Snape saw with disgust, although to be fair all of that had probably gone a long time ago – he was drinking some of the swill from Pettigrew's old stash, and it looked as if it had mold floating in the bottle.

"This. Is. My. House," said Snape slowly, deciding that small words were probably expedient. "You have broken in and stolen my things."

Still no response. Snape sighed.

"What is your name?"

"My friends call me Big D. My friends-"

"Let me guess," Snape sneered. "Your _friends_ convinced you to come here. Your _friends_ were the ones who broke my window, destroyed my house, and drained the better part of a wine collection which is, by the way, a great deal older than you are. _You_ would never _normally_ have contemplated such a thing; _you_ merely stood by and _watched_ as they accomplished all of this. And now they have abandoned you here to take the blame."

"No."

"_No?_"

"_I_ abanda- abada- I left them."

"You left your friends? What could _possibly_ induce you to abandon the company of such model citizens?"

The boy, perhaps unsurprisingly, missed both the sarcasm and the rhetorical nature of this question.

"They kept hitting people. I like hitting people," the boy said, destroying any shred of sympathy Snape might have had for him, and then continued, shockingly, "But I don't like hitting people smaller than me."

Snape stared at him, dumbstruck. Against all odds, against all experience, all proof, he seemed to have stumbled upon an impossible, an incredible wonder: an adolescent with a conscience.

"What is your name, boy?"

The boy stared glazily up at the ceiling, and, instead of answering, mumbled again, "I like this place. It makes me feel like I've got things I should be doing…"

Yes, Snape thought, that's the Misdirection Charm that's supposed to keep you _out_. And then he groaned internally; he recognized that glazed look all too well from many of his own early, self-tested, potions experiments. The boy probably had a hell of a hangover.

"All right," he snarled. "Up. If you're going to vomit, it's not going to be on my floor."

"I don't want to move."

"I imagine," said Snape, "you don't want to do a lot of things. One of those things is find out what will happen if you disobey me. _Up_."

It was rather like watching Longbottom attempting to do magic, and the resulting glassy mess of bottles left Snape wondering whether merely destroying the room himself might be more efficient.

"Into the kitchen," he sneered, disgustedly, and went off to find the hangover potion. There was at least a fifty percent chance that it was still there; in all of the wreckage, it didn't look like anybody had touched anything medicinal.

"Sorry about your house, and all," the boy finally mumbled, fifteen minutes later and several tumblersful of potion more than Snape had anticipated (he had recalculated the boy's weight upwards not once, but twice).

"Go home," Snape sneered.

"I can't." The boy shifted uncomfortably under the resulting glare. "They're fighting again."

"And?"

"I don't-"

"Were you planning to spend the night?" The sarcasm finally hit home. "If you are, may I suggest beginning by paying rent? Or, better, paying for some of the damage you've caused here."

The boy blanched in apparently genuine fear. Just like a student back at Hogwarts, crumpling at the first hint of punishment – the first hint of _consequences_. Unwilling to face up to the fact that recklessness _had_ consequences, unwilling to stop or think before it was too late...

Snape suddenly felt very old. It occurred to him that he was only thirty-five, and that it could be years, more than sixty intolerable years, before he was finally allowed to die; more than forty years before he truly became old…

"…And I'd be happy to pay you for the gin an' all, really, but there's no more pocket money since we moved and Dad don't want me working, he says it isn't decent-"

"Go home," Snape repeated, wearily. Home, home- he wished he had something more real to offer the boy. But what could you say, to him, to any child – what could you do? There was no way to keep them from the future, from choices, and from all of the horrible, horrible mistakes…

"An' you're not going to tell on me-" the boy tripped, backing towards the door.

"Go home," he said, and wondered, as he turned around in solitude to the broken, lightless room, just where in hell that might be.

Whew! Load of angst there. Thank you so, so much if you've stuck with it this far – next week, I promise things will finally start picking up. And, as an extra treat for being such wonderful readers (I love you _all_!) here are TWO teasers for the price of one:

"Hello, Lucius."

***

Two days later, coming home from her grocery shopping at nine o'clock PM, the last person Petunia would have expected to see on her doorstep was Severus Snape, covered in blood so thick it had soaked through the front of a full set of tattered black robes.


	5. Chapter 5

Before we get started this week, I believe a few apologies are in order.

Apology number one: the delay. In my own defense, I have had no access to the internet for the past two weeks, but I realize this is DEFINITELY not good enough, especially considering how kind you have all been with the reviews. All I can do is promise that a delay this long will (computer gods permitting) never happen again, and say, once again, I'M SO SORRY!!!!

Apology number two: No Lucius this week. You have full permission to hate me for this. I can, however, promise he will be returning next week in spades. And bringing friends. And Plot Bunnies, and mayhem... Oh, yes; next week, everything really starts going to hell... (drifts off with evil smile)...

In the meantime, please enjoy this week's specials: a goodly dose of fluffiness and a semi-shirtless Snape! ;)

-psychegurl

***

Two days later, coming home from her grocery shopping at nine o'clock at night, the last person Petunia would have expected to see on her doorstep was Severus Snape, covered in blood so thick it had soaked through the front of a full set of tattered black robes.

"There's nowhere else to go," he rasped, before she could close her mouth, and then, before she could open it wide enough to say any of the things she would have liked to, he repeated, desperately: "there's nowhere else to go."

He had left red spots on the doormat. Why anyone, she thought distantly, would _voluntarily_ wear something that resembled nothing so much as a pile of burned and shredded rags… Between the lank greasy hair and the robes and the possible lack of sanity, he really looked quite terrifying.

He looked, in fact, absolutely dangerous.

She stepped back from the doorway quickly.

"Well, come on in then," she snapped, when he didn't move, and when he looked at her as if she were a combination of the Archangel Gabriel and Lily, she sniffed and added, "it's not _decent_ to have you dripping on the doorstep like that. Any of the neighbors might see."

"Don't mess up the floors," she told him briskly once they were inside, automatically reaching for the place the old newspapers used to be kept in Privet Drive – near the door, in a nested basket next to the clothes brush and shoe polish – before she remembered, and shoved down the customary, humiliating wash of shame, and fished a clean garbage bag from the hole under the sink.

The apartment was tiny – barely large enough for one person to live in, much less three. Snape's head knocked a cockroach out of the cracked doorway as he went in. It was antiseptically clean; hours of meticulous, loving work must have gone into removing the stains from the linoleum floor. Snape looked around at the empty spice jars, arrayed in alphabetical order in front of a leaking sink; the drawer handles, each polished brightly enough to be a mirror; the magazine pages of flowers and landscapes meticulously fastened over the worst of the cracks in the walls, and saw in them the signs of slowly growing madness.

"Stand there," Petunia said, pointing to the plastic bag, and was pleasantly surprised when, unlike Harry Potter (or any other wizard that had invaded her house over the years) he meekly obeyed her.

"What happened?" She called over her shoulder as she went to get the medicine kit. Although what they had in the way of actual medicine now, God only knew…

"Mulciber," Snape replied through clenched teeth.

"What happened?"

"I didn't kill him."

Shereappeared around the corner carrying a small box of band-aids, three very ratty towels, and a half-filled bottle of whiskey.

"You can kill people with magic?"

"Petunia Tuney Evans," Snape said wearily, "did you never wonder how your sister died?"

She shoved the whiskey and towels violently away from her onto the table, pressed her lips together, and didn't answer. It seemed to strike off chords of complicating thought in him, watching her standing in the half-light with that face so like and unlike Lily's. He wondered hazily why she didn't sniff at him for the mistake in her name.

"You'll have to take those… _things_ off. They're not sterilized"

It took him a second to realize she was referring to his robes. He wondered vaguely if something might be wrong with him, and started methodically to yank them over his head.

Petunia opened the box of band-aids, extracted two wrinkled brown strips and four crumpled wrappers, sniffed again, ruthlessly discarded them all, and went into the kitchen to boil some rags. She reappeared in a haze of hissing steam and gray cloth, and surveyed him critically.

"I suppose someone like you _wouldn't_ be able to afford decent clothing," she muttered finally, with another of those godawful sniffs- "and _that's_ quite far enough, thank you."

Snape, whose brain seemed to be staggering slightly, realized that he had unbuttoned his shirt and started to methodically unbutton his shirtsleeves, and stopped himself. Everything was liquid; sliding, sideways, out the edges of his mind-

"I came for chocolate," he finally managed. "To borrow – some chocolate. I can pay you back-"

"Stay away from the windows," Petunia snapped. "Honestly, looking the way you do-"

"You seem to care a great deal about what the neighbors think."

She ignored that, and stared at the wall just over his head. She seemed to be teetering on the edge of a vast chasm, swaying back and forth in the dull yellow light, steeling herself for some interminable plunge.

"You know Harry Potter."

"Yes," Snape said, because this was clearly a question, although who in the world _didn't_ know Harry Potter-

"Do you know if he's alive?"

Snape stared at her. If Petunia Dursley opening the door to offer him bandages was surprising, this was Armageddon. This was Voldemort and Dumbledore deciding to hang up their respective wands together and join the Muggle government. This was Sirius Black_ apologizing_-

"And if he is, if you could please tell him," Petunia continued doggedly, "that Dudley has been asking after him, and his fami- his_aunt_anduncleareproudofwhathe's doing." She finished all in one breath, as if leaping into cold water, and heaved a sniff of apparent relief.

Snape was staring at her in absolute stupefaction.

"You mean you don't _know_-"

Oh, this was _classic_. This was goddamned characteristic. Harry-bloody-Potter, savior of the Wizarding World, Hero of Muggleborns and Small Fuzzy Creatures, Harry-bloody-damned-_James_-Potter hadn't even told his own relatives-

Where could he begin? Where could one even _start_ explaining to this woman, who had lived through two wars (the same wars that he had – and why hadn't he ever thought of that before? Why hadn't he ever wondered, over all these years, what had happened to Lily's family? _Lily_ would have thought about it, Lily would have cared-) the woman who had raised Harry Potter (and Snape liked to think he had a better idea than the rest of the Worshipping World exactly how difficult that must have been), about the rise of Dark Lord, about prophecies and Horcruxes and the fact that not four weeks ago, he himself had been willing to sacrifice her nephew's life, the son of Lily Evans, for the mere possibility of peace…

"He's alive, and he'll be glad to hear it." Snape managed at last.

As the cobwebbing lines of stress evaporated slowly from Petunia Dursley's face, leaving her ten years younger,he discovered yet another reason to hate Harry Potter.

"He killed the Dark Lord," Snape added, but before he could add anything more, she reached forward with the towels towards his left sleeve, and on reflex, built up over years of fear, he leapt back, grabbed at her arm and _twisted_-

There, under the sleeves: bruises, sketching rough dark outlines of thick knuckles.

Recent, he thought, through the roaring in his ears. Recent, or so severe that they had lasted for days…

Visions danced in front of Snape's eyes: a woman, crying on the stairwell; late at night, burying his head under all of the blankets and wishing he knew magic so he could shut out the _noise_, his mother's ever-present, ever-patient smiles the next morning, and the pieces of an old wand lying broken on the floor…

"What are you going to do?" Petunia whispered. It occurred to Snape, belatedly, that he must look angry.

He _felt_ angry.

"Mummy?"

Both of them whirled around at precisely the same time. A familiar, blond, leather-clad figure (smelling strongly of cheap cologne, Snape noted, and very faintly of alcohol) was stuck, staring, in the act of wedging itself through the open doorway.

Petunia dropped the rag as if it were scalding, and went hurrying over to her – yes, her son. (She had a son; had Lily ever mentioned that? Had Albus? She had a _son-_)

"Duddykins, darling, you mustn't come home so late; Daddy and Mummy will worry-"

"Daddy's not home right now," the whelp muttered, scratching a mud-covered boot across the floor (and, Snape noticed, determinedly avoiding looking at him). Petunia flushed red.

"Your father keeps- his own hours, Diddykins, you know that-"

"What's _he_ doing here?"

Yes. Yes, this was undoubtedly James Potter's nephew.

"He was just leaving," said Petunia sharply, all hint of sweetness gone. Her tone dared the boy to ask more; nonchalantly, Snape noticed, she had removed his robes from where they lay on the sofa and wadded them into a bundle behind her back.

"Your son and I," said Snape, rising, "have met before, Mrs. Dursley."

She flushed again at that, incomprehensibly; the boy, on the other hand, turned pale.

"No I haven't-"

"It was a very cordial encounter," Snape continued, smiling affably. "I was greatly impressed with his manners. And his tact."

Dudley swallowed.

"Mummy? I- I think I'll go to bed now."

He started sidling towards the other door. Snape reached out and tugged the robes from Petunia's nervous grip. "I'll see myself out."

Unsurprisingly, she followed him.

"_You stay away from my son _- !"

Under the flickering fluorescent light and the stale air of the Muggle sidewalk, Snape lost patience.

"You should tell your _son_," Snape snarled, "that when breaking into people's houses, it's probably wisest not to pass out drunk on their floors."

He would have expected her to deny this; or, at the very least, to defend the boy, but after a few seconds, she only closed her mouth with a snap.

"Dudders isn't a bad boy," she said wearily, in a voice that indicated she had said the same thing, many, many times before, so many times that she no longer believed it. Probably to the husband. Snape felt another wave of fury rising up to choke him.

"He could be worse," Snape managed, eventually. After all, he himself had been doing much worse things at that age than stealing alcohol, and much, much worse things very soon after… "However, somebody ought to warn him that not all of the bottles in my house are safe to drink from."

And with that, he left. She did not seem to be the kind of person one said goodbye to.

***

Teaser for next week: "I believe," said Snape, "you are labouring under the delusion that because I am wandless, I do not present a threat."


End file.
